Simple Garden Solutions

by Saxon Holt from Gardening Gone Wild

I love green peas. Big fat English shelling peas. Unfortunately the birds love the young sprouts and I have tried all sorts of tricks to keep them off my little crop.

This year I finally listened to my father’s advice and built a scarecrow.

Thomas Jefferson had a contest every year with his gardening buddies to see who could bring in the first peas of the season. With that in mind, I began planting my first peas in mid February, planning a new row as soon as the previous row sprouted. I would see how early I could get my own peas. Secretly storing my results, I would then be able to challenge my own buddies in future years.

I had some great fresh compost, good seeds, and warm weather. As I buried the seeds in the rich soil I could almost taste those fat spring peas, deep green, lightly steamed with a drop of real butter, a wee bit of salt, and a dash of dill. I covered the rows with wire mesh knowing the birds would peck out the young green shoots.

Things began well. The seeds began sprouting in about nine days. The next row went in. Suddenly the little plants began to vanish. I checked every morning for some evidence of slugs or snails. No slime trails anywhere. My earwig traps of rolled up newspaper had nothing. Cutworms maybe ? No signs, no telltale pellets of poop. The second row is now sprouting while the first row disappears.

Meanwhile, my father is following my adventures through our weekly telephone conversation. He is 95 and talking gardening is our number one mutual pleasure. He wants to know about every vegetable I can grow in California, knowing it will never match the flavor of what he could have grown in Virginia “in his day”. And in truth no corn, no melon, and certainly no tomato I have grown in California comes close to those I remember in my father’s garden. But he could never grow peas.

He had heard me lament about the birds pecking out previous crops of lettuces or peas and wondered: “Son, why don’t you try a scarecrow ?” Too much trouble for something that is not likely to work, so I just cover my crops with mesh. And no, Pop, don’t wonder about rabbits. We don’t have rabbits and they couldn’t get through the mesh either

This year I had the mesh out early so the birds (or rabbits) couldn’t be the problem, yet something was getting to my peas before they could even put up their first tendril. I planted my third crop along the gaps of the first. There were still some living shoots but headless, trying to regenerate new leaves

Then I noticed. The dag gone birds were sitting on the mesh poking their beaks down to the buffet line. In broad daylight. I had been providing them convenient seating. “Son, why don’t you put up a scarecrow ?” my father asked again the next Sunday. “All you need is a couple of old boards, three nails, and an old shirt

OK, OK. I will humor him and he will enjoy the birds victory despite the wasted effort. And if he thinks it is so simple – I will make it simple. Two old 2×4s from the woodpile under the deck, three mis-matched and bent nails from the bottom of my tool chest; and I plant the crossed boards by the shortest bed in my vegetable garden.

It took me all of 15 minutes, and I had to sacrifice my favorite shirt. It is just as old and beat up as the ones my father always wore in his own garden, and I haven’t seen a bird in the garden for two weeks.

The peas are finally climbing up the trellis, now two months from first planting. I won’t have any to bring my father when I visit in May, but Jefferson never had peas in May either.

I’m gonna ask my Dad for one of his old shirts when I see him.

Rain Harvesting

How to Make a Rain Barrel Work for Your Garden

Simple barrel and soaker hose system helps you water your garden and lawn with a rain barrel without spending a lot.

Cheryl Long

Turn that next downpour into a weeklong supply of water for your sprouting tomatoes. illustration by Nate Skow

Middle America gets hot in the summer. Try as we might to prevent that cracked-earth look in the garden, the amount of water one would use to keep a large amount of garden soil moist in July and August would be pretty pricy. Placing any number of rain barrels underneath downspouts, a bit of rain harvesting, could make all the difference for your garden irrigation expenses.

Many folks don’t realize that both topsoil and subsoil can store quite a bit of water, or that plants can then make use of that soil-stored water over time. In most areas, for much of the year, the topsoil and/or subsoil may not be saturated with water – which means there’s unused storage capacity down there. Using our design, you can enhance the effectiveness of your rain barrel by creating an irrigation attachment that will deliver rainwater from the roof to your garden or lawn in quantities that could easily double the effective rainfall in those areas – recharging the localized soil-water content in the process.

Materials List:

1. 2-inch PVC or ABS bulkhead fitting with 2-inch female pipe thread in outer flange.
2. 2-inch by 4-inches long TBE pipe nipple with 2-inch male pipe thread on both ends.
3. 2-inch PVC ball valve with 2-inch female pipe thread on both ends.
4. 2-inch PVC male 433-020 adapter with 2-inch male pipe thread on one end and 2-inch spigot (slip fit) on other end.
5. 2-inch 672-7180 manifold with 2-inch slip fit inlet and six 3/4-inch ribbed-barb outlets.
6. PVC primer and PVC glue.
7. Reservoir (barrel) for collecting water.

1. First, add an extension to a downspout from your house or garage to direct the runoff into a reservoir such as a barrel, large plastic water tank or stock tank – the larger the volume, the better. Or cut off a downspout so that you can fit your reservoir under it.

2. Now it’s time to make fast-flowing soaker hoses. Drill holes (about 1/16 of an inch in diameter should be sufficient) in lengths of old garden hoses and use screw-on caps to plug the ends of the hoses that will not be connected to the barrel. Alternatively, fold over and crimp the end of a cut length of hose and secure it with a hose clamp, a couple of heavy-duty staples, some scrap wire or a pop-rivet. (Note: This setup may not have enough water pressure to work with the kind of porous soaker hoses often sold in garden stores.)

3. Next, head to your local hardware store. Take a sketch to show them what you want to do (see the illustration on Page XX), and have them help you find everything you need: a bulkhead fitting (at least 2 inches in diameter) to let water flow out of a hole you’ll drill (or cut with a hole saw) in your reservoir, plus a number of PVC fittings and a section of PVC pipe to build a manifold with multiple outlets for attaching hoses to the reservoir through the bulkhead. If you would rather just order the parts for our manifold online, we’ve included a source and part numbers below.

4. Now cut a hole into the side of your barrel or tank – make it the diameter required to properly install the bulkhead fitting. (If you have a commercially made rain barrel, it may already have a small hole drilled in it with a spigot. Just carve your new hole beside that.) For holes larger than 1 inch in diameter, a hole saw connected to your hand-held drill might be best. If your reservoir is made of relatively flexible and thin plastic, you might be better off scribing the circle and carefully cutting it out with a utility knife, tin snips or keyhole saw. Place the hole near the bottom of the barrel so that as it fills with water, the pressure will push the water out through the soaker hoses. You can also use the manifold to drain the tank that way.

5. Install the bulkhead fitting, taking care to place the gasket and/or caulking so that it will seal properly.

6. Following the instructions on the PVC glue container, assemble the manifold as shown in the illustration on Page XX. Use this design as a guide – there are an infinite number of ways to create a custom manifold with PVC fittings and pipe.

7. Attach the manifold to the bulkhead fitting – be sure that the support leg on the outer end of the manifold is pointing down.

8. Attach the open ends of your hoses onto the manifold – use a hose clamp to secure them in place if the fit is loose. If the fit is too tight, use a hair dryer or heat gun to soften the hose end before slipping it over the manifold outlet barbs.

9. Place the hoses on whatever area of your garden or lawn you want to water next time it rains. If possible, rake a shallow depression into the surface of your garden rows or beds to help trap the rainwater so it will percolate into the soil and your plants’ root zones rather than just run off.

10. Wait for rain!

MOTHER EARTH